Editorial: Kids Count reports on the young and vulnerable

While the nation rightly focuses on the devastation in Haiti, a new report on child poverty in Michigan is a disturbing reminder of pressing needs much closer to home.
Kids Count, the annual report from the Michigan League for Human Services, shows gains and losses in various categories, from educational attainment to abuse and neglect. Taken together, however, the statistics paint a picture of a state that should do better by its youngest and most vulnerable citizens. Without smart and sustainable investment in the health and well-being of youngsters, Michigan will face an even more precarious future.

The first thing needed is a functional and effective social safety net, from health care for the poor to child protective services. That network has been jeopardized and strained as lawmakers wrestle with an unsustainable budget without the necessary tax and spending reforms.
The report underscores, also, the need for a first-rate educational system that continues to push youngsters toward college or technical school. Post-high school education will be an indispensable tool for climbing out of poverty. High-wage, low-skill jobs can no longer be the building blocks of our economy.

Among the report’s major statewide findings:

Poverty rose for youngsters from birth to age 17 by 6 percent between 2005 and 2007, the most recent year for which comparable figures were available. The latest estimates are that one in every five children in Michigan lives in poverty.

Between 2006 and 2008, the number of students qualifying for a free or reduced lunch, the prime measure of poverty in schools, rose 14 percent.

Cases of abuse and neglect jumped 16 percent between 2000 and 2008. Some 30,000 kids in the state were found to be abused or neglected in 2008 alone. That is, in part, a measure of economic stress on families.

On the positive side, deaths among infants, children and teens all declined by varying degrees between 2000 and 2007.

The numbers are bad — in some cases, worse — in West Michigan. In Kent and Ottawa counties, poverty among children is on the rise. Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor, serves more than one in three children in Kent County. And in Kent County, confirmed victims of abuse and neglect rose a staggering 98 percent between 2000 and 2008, to 2,795 children. The numbers rose, but less dramatically, in Ottawa.

Significantly, the tally of students proficient in math across the state multiplied between 2003 and 2008, rising 65 percent for fourth graders and 47 percent for eighth graders.

Those numbers represent encouraging strides at key developmental junctures. Poverty in Michigan will decrease when more jobs are available and more people equipped to have them. The best tool for that is education. But state funding for schools, community colleges and universities has been erratic at best.

Despite a statewide imperative for good schools, children can’t learn when they’re hungry. They certainly can’t learn when their neglected or abused.

Services for the poor remain a significant part of Michigan’s general fund budget — a budget that next year already faces an estimated $1.6 billion hole.

That makes it imperative that lawmakers find a long-term structural fix for the state’s taxing and spending patterns — soon. Michigan youngsters don’t need any more neglect.

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